


the end of the galaxy, and back again

by buckstiel



Category: Black Sails, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Complicated Relationships, Heist, M/M, Mark Read is Trans, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Canon, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-03-20 03:10:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18984025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckstiel/pseuds/buckstiel
Summary: The war against the Empire was fought, at last, and was won--but not all is right. The New Republic has abandoned allies that helped them gain power, and John Silver, at his wits' end, pulls his oldest, best ally back into the fight.(A post-series, post-RoTJ Star Wars AU)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i once claimed to use my useless heaps of star wars knowledge for chaotic good so i think this qualifies
> 
> infinite thanks to euphorion for tweeting enough about black sails to get me to finally watch it

The weather on Lah’mu was nothing short of dismal.

It was a wonder anything managed to grow under the cloudy haze that tipped the landscape closer to grayscale than it had any right to. Somewhere beneath it all were rich greens and enough earthy hues to keep his core warm even when the winds insisted otherwise--if the sun ever shone, Thomas liked to joke, it was while they slept at night.

But things did grow: many things, in fact, whole acres of grains and vegetables and fruits that responded to the lack of light by only spreading themselves higher and wider. James admired them for it--quietly, to himself, knowing Thomas would be ready to offer a sensible explanation. They’re the native flora, or the initial seeds they picked up at the spaceport were engineered by Core-Worlders trying to fight the smog, or it was the Force pushing the galaxy to do its part, give something back to them.

(So Thomas wasn’t always sensible on matters of the farm. But James didn’t want to hear about the Force all the same.)

As he came to the end of the row of stickli root he was weeding, the light shifted to a different tone of gray, a little bit brighter than before to alert him and the stray herd of bantha in the distance that the sun was starting to set. His knees creaked when he stood nowadays, especially after kneeling for so long, but tossing the weeds past the soil bed, he craned his neck over the tips of the maize along the border of their plot to see if any color was planning on breaking through today.

There weren’t sunsets in space, and there weren’t sunsets on Lah’mu either. Not proper ones, anyway.

“Tell me about Dantooine, then,” Thomas said one night in bed after the grog flowed a little heavy and guided James into a grumbling mood. “I hear it’s nice there… was it?”

And he couldn’t say anything to that, couldn’t manage anything but just staring back at Thomas through the dim evening light. Dantooine had sunsets, yes, brilliant ones in oranges and pinks he could hardly believe; but Dantooine didn’t have Thomas. When James turned in on Dantooine, in his bunk aboard the _Purrgil_ , he was always alone. The only finger stroking the nub of his chipped horn would be his own while stewing over the latest upheaval over the _Urca_ ’s coaxium, not Thomas’ trying to ease the worry away.

“You see anything this time?” called Thomas from behind him, back toward the house. His grin lit the ground at his feet as he held up a line of fish snagged from the river nearby.

“Not yet."

“Bring in some of that celoslay and I’ll make dinner.”

James sighed, wiping some of the dirt on his hands as he maneuvered over bulging gourds and unripe fruit buds on the way to the celoslay. The wind was picking up strong enough to whistle around the far-off mountains--a storm could be blowing in from the sea, so he would need to tie down the shutters with an extra knot before bed and secure the equipment--

It was the wind, it should have been the wind, but something about the pitch pulled James’ eyes back toward the horizon where a ship was coming in for a landing.

Ships didn’t just come to Lah’mu on a whim. There were no sights to see, no hyperspace routes to facilitate the trip. Landing on Lah’mu meant one of two things: turning away from an old life or pulling someone back into one, and James wanted nothing to do with either option.

“What’s all this about?” Thomas appeared at his side just as the ship, a battered old Skipray blast boat, settled dangerously close to the farthest row of maize. “Who is this?”

“Why do you think I’d know?”

“Do you think our blasters still work?”

The entry ramp folded down before James could begin to even consider the question, any thought of answering it disappearing when the end of the ramp crushed a handful of stalks. “Whoever this is better hope they don’t.”

“James--”

“Captain Flint?”

They both froze--Thomas, James knew, because he’d never properly woven that name into his image of him; but James, that was for the voice itself.

One he’d expected to never hear again.

Sure enough, around the corner of the maize appeared John Silver.

A few streaks of gray curled into his hair and a few more lines graced his face, but otherwise it was like they’d kept him in carbonite since their last day on Dantooine--the same shabby duster of someone else’s former glory, the same trousers hemmed at the left knee to show the cybernetic leg he talked those smugglers into donating. The Rebel Alliance insignia he painted on the metal kneecap was chipped and faded beyond recognition.

“Captain Flint… Thomas,” Silver added, nodding his way. “It’s been a long time.”

“Don’t… call me that,” James said. “That’s not--”

“My apologies.” He held up his hands, offered the slight smile that stoked his ire unendingly when they’d first met.

Something was off.

“What should I call you, then?”

“Nothing,” he said, turning on his heel back toward the house, “because I don’t want anything to do with whatever you brought with you.”

For once in his life, Silver only managed a splutter or two in response; if Thomas was protesting his exit, it wasn’t registering in his ears over the crunch of rocks under his feet or the soft rumble of an _actual_ storm in the distance or stifling memory of TIE fighters screeching over the lake that held New Providence Island. That life belonged to James Flint, and that man was as good as dead. James McGraw was a simple farmer on a nearly-deserted planet who had no reason to know the war veteran who landed in his farm.

That was not a man James McGraw could ever know, or trust, or--

Thomas’ footsteps were fast approaching from behind. “At least listen to what he has to say!”

“Or let me know what name you go by now!”

James forced himself to a stop, turned back around to find Silver still at the edge of the property, the toe of his boot just behind the invisible line.

“If I’m going to think about you spending all your time on this sad little rock, I’d like to do so accurately.”

Over the years, James had told Thomas many tales of how the legendary Long John Silver had wriggled himself in and out of the most precarious of situations on the power of a story alone--fabricated or not completely so--and always with the qualification that it was a _process_ , a long winding road he led others on until he could let go of their hand and watch them continue in the way he desired even when the road disappeared.

Being felled by Silver’s words after two lines with all that preface would be a sad sight.

But they’d all seen sadder.

“Fine,” he grumbled at last. “Come in and say what you need to say. We were just about to have dinner.”

*

News traveled slowly to Lah’mu if it traveled at all. The collapse of the Empire made its way to their staticky comms system a short four months after it was finally all over, dramatic accounts of Star Destroyers diving into the dunes of Jakku nose-first becoming increasingly unbelievable as the story wove its way through the farmlands. The second Death Star was taken out with the help of Ewoks!--but what was a Death Star, and why had there been two? What was this people were saying about a boy and a lightsaber and the Emperor falling in every sense of the word?

The other farmers could only hypothesize but Silver had answers. Silver had been out in the galaxy as these events occurred, the HoloNet lighting up in real time with the news of Jakku and Endor and all the planets that got lost in the shuffle long before anyone thought about telling Lah’mu.

“Your war finally happened,” Silver said over the lip of his drink. He was on his third refill, and the booze must have gotten stronger in the Core because he wasn’t affected at all. “Everything we did on Dantooine, that New Providence Island endeavor… kriff,” he sighed. “This band of wild cards broke into the Imperial archives on Scarif and got the plans for that kriffing Death Star, and then we were _really_ in the game. That’s when the odds finally turned in our favor.”

“So Alderaan is really gone?” Thomas said quietly.

“Wish I could tell you otherwise.”

The Death Star at first sounded too fantastical to be real: a space station housing millions that could also destroy entire planets? That was the stuff of fiction, the fables parents would press upon their children in times of desperation.

“Bail Organa was the one who named New Providence Island,” James said after a moment. “He said someone told him it was a Jedi thing.” He let the question hang unsaid between them.

“At the very least,” Silver said carefully, “his daughter has been instrumental.”

The rest of dinner passed in silence.

James was attending to the dishes before Silver spoke again--it was a tentative start, a couple coughs into the collar of his duster and his chair whining under his uncomfortable shifting before he managed to get a word out.

“The New Republic on Hosnian Prime--”

“Creative name,” James muttered.

“Let him talk,” Thomas said over his shoulder, and presumably motioned for Silver to continue.

“So…” Silver sighed. “The New Republic is based on Hosnian Prime, _not_ Coruscant--”

“Interesting choice,” Thomas said.

“Well…” Silver shrugged as James turned back to join them with three mugs of caf. “It’s impossible to repeat _every_ mistake of your predecessors, I suppose...still--they’re having quite a time getting themselves to be anything close to effective. Mon Mothma--you remember her, from Chandrila--she’s Chancellor, got some ex-Imperial she trusts playing whip, but it’s like they didn’t learn anything.”

Thomas may not have known the narrative games Silver played, but James still did--knew them like they were an intuitive part of existence, the careful pauses on cliffhangers and upticks at the corner of his mouth when he could see his audience taking the bait. This time, though, Silver would never have noticed Thomas leaning forward in his chair ever so slightly with the way he stared down James, who refused to do more than glower through the steam of his caf.

“The Rebels are in the halls of government but pretend they don’t know the scum and villainy that helped them get there.” He dropped his mug on the table to rub a headache away at his eyebrow. “They received reports that their former allies, a crew including Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny, disappeared in the Unknown Regions under the kind of mysterious circumstances that would warrant an investigation--and they chose to do a whopping nothing about it.”

And there it was.

Exactly what James had predicted, a call back to that old life. He felt Thomas readjust his posture beside him, his hand coming to rest on his knee under the table.

“Surely you’re not piloting that dreadful blast boat by yourself?” Thomas asked after a moment.

“There will be some familiar faces with us, yes.” He chewed the inside of his cheek and wove a finger into one of his stray curls, all habits he must have picked up in the years since James had seen him, and it left something in his heart sore. “They’re back on Dantooine securing supplies. Trying to prepare for everything, you see.”

Thomas’ eyes were heavy. They sat on James’ face with an expectation he didn’t know if he could meet, not at that moment, and he stared into his caf instead. “What do you think you’re going to find?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well…” James placed his mug down, met Silver’s gaze with as much of the old Captain Flint that he could muster. “What do you _hope_ you’re going to find, then?”

In that moment they could have been back at the Nass’au Cantina, Idelle chastising the latest new patron with a precise snap of the rag she used to wipe down the bar as they plotted in the darkened corner booth. Something flipped at the bottom of his stomach, flipping the rest of their plot on this planet upside down until it was a ship--it was a ship in the moment it jumped to hyperspace, stretched to an impossible degree as stars turned to streaks around them.

There was the part of James that was glad to have walked away from that life; but there was also the part of him that laid in bed an extra moment savoring the blips of dreams that had survived until morning.

“I’m hoping they’re still alive, obviously,” Silver said. “And I’m hoping that if this is a result of something other than gross incompetence on the part of their crew that we can discover a threat to our new galactic peace before it becomes serious.”

Silver let the silence last far longer than James anticipated, even as his thoughts went round and round the proposition a hundred times and twisted it all into an audible grumble at the back of his throat. He couldn’t bear to abandon the peace he’d found on Lah’mu with Thomas, but leaving Jack and Anne to some unmarked, unknown fate--

“Max and Madi begged me not to track you down,” Silver said suddenly. “They’re who’s on Dantooine. Abandoned good positions in the New Republic over this, the both of them. They think we three could easily be enough, but…”

“They’ve never faced Blackbeard or a Hutt,” Thomas said.

“You’d be surprised,” Silver said. “But Blackbeard or the Hutts could easily be…the stuff out past Wild Space--”

“Fine,” James said. “One last ride. I can’t just let them rot out on Lysatra or wherever, count me in.”

“And me as well.” Thomas stood to underline his point, and James couldn’t keep his surprise from jumping to the surface. “What? Did you think I was going to stay here and tend to the crops like a good traditional Imperial housewife?”

James gritted his teeth. “I never--”

“So it’s settled, I’m to assume?” Silver said, clasping his hands together.

“Yes,” Thomas said, and the grip he had on James’ shoulder told him it was not up for debate.

Their bags didn’t take long to be packed. Silver and Thomas chatted amicably on the way to the hobbled ship, and James couldn’t help but glance longingly at the crops he’d nurtured only to likely return to them in however many months to find them withered, dried, and overgrown with weeds.

“Where the hell did you pick this thing up?” James asked as Silver pulled the entry ramp up.

“Oh, you know how it goes,” he said. “A second-hand dealer finds an abandoned ship at some yard in the Roche system and refurbishes it… you take what you can get.”

The booth installed in the ship’s galley rattled as Silver got the engine running, and it rattled faster as they escaped the planet’s gravity, sliding into the spinning blue and violet hues of hyperspace.

Next stop, Dantooine--a planet James hadn’t set foot on in ten years. He hoped it wouldn’t be the blunder he feared.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new update!! i haven't updated chapter-by-chapter like this in honestly over ten years so i have no idea how the pace is going to be. that being said this is the first fic in over two years that's got me going with this kind of energy so!! aaaa
> 
> thank you for your kind words, they all make my heart grow numerous sizes

Nass’au Cantina may have shuttered when the Rebels left the planet, but only in the physical sense. The capital city’s downtown still hummed with the energy that had coursed between every exchange of credits, both in the open and behind closed doors. Silver led them through a narrow, crowded marketplace selling everything from bantha jerky that vendors all but waved in the faces of passersby to bones carefully displayed on a dirty velvet pillow at a veiled figure’s feet.

“Authentic Jedi relics,” the figure said to Thomas as they squeezed by, revealing themselves as a Dug. “A bone from Master Adi Gallia’s hand will bring you favor with the Force--”

“He’ll pass,” James said, pushing Thomas ahead of him. 

“Hey, we might be needing some of that favor.”

“Not like that.”

“Those aren’t actually Jedi bones, are they?” Thomas threw up to Silver at the head of the line. 

“Most certainly not. That’s the eleventh person I’ve seen try to sell that particular piece of Master Gallia, and unless Tholothians have eleven hands--aha, here we are.” Silver ushered them forth into an even narrower alleyway, turning everything dusk-dark in a matter of steps. The chatter of the street faded quickly as they maneuvered their way forward--a tricky matter given the uneven face of stone on either side. At best they had a couple inches of berth, but the occasional outcropping made sure to dig into their arms hard enough for a bruise. 

James had to wonder if it was a weak attempt at a deterrent; at about the halfway point, noise started to pick up again, and a narrow sliver of light fell across the path ahead. 

Silver rapped his knuckles on the door in a specific rhythm before shouldering his way in--the doorway opened up into a warmly-lit space that was outfitted for multiple hats. Part cantina, part hostel, and part corner market, the main room was hardly populated enough for their arrival not to go unnoticed. The Togrutan at the bar momentarily paused her methodical wipe-down of the glasses, a Rodian opened one eye from the line of bunks against the wall, and all the heads pressed together in conversation at the central table turned to face them. 

At least those faces were mostly familiar, even if they didn’t all seem happy to see Silver. 

Max was the first to do more than stare--she rose gracefully from the bench seating, flipping her lekku over her shoulder at the precise angle that let their thick silver adornments catch the best angle of light. She had changed just about as much as Silver had: everything in her face sat just the way James remembered, but she had swapped out her bartender getup for something more practical, a black and gray travel suit with orange accents to complement her blue skin. 

“My favorite Zabrak,” she said, striding right up to James. “Back from the dead.”

“You’d told them I was dead?” James hissed to Silver, who shrugged. Figured. 

“I never believed him, for what it’s worth.” 

“And he never tried to lie to me about it,” Madi said from her spot at the table. She hadn’t bothered to turn around, keeping her eyes on the end of a dreadlock she had absently wrapped around her finger. 

Max squinted at James, then glanced behind him to Thomas. “Who is this?”

The air in the room grew thick--with what, James couldn’t identify exactly, but there had to be multiple pieces in play. The suspicion from those at the table, the wariness from those at the bar or the bunks that had them halfway reaching for their holdout blasters, those were swirling heavy around them, but James could only focus on the inscrutable tension spreading from Silver’s shifting feet. 

Silver hadn’t told them about Thomas. 

James thought back to that night hiding out in the forests of Mandalore, the careful attention Silver paid as he laid out his life at the edge of the fire glowing between them, waiting to see if it would burn. He didn’t expect it to, not quite. But there was always the worry--how unfounded it was, even after ten years, even in all the forms it took.

He hadn’t realized he’d started thumbing at his chipped horn until Silver caught his eye across the short distance. “Right,” James said, pulling his hand back down to his side. “This is--”

“Thomas Hamilton.” He reached to shake Max’s hand, her eyebrow arching as Madi finally turned around. “I’m--”

“Hamilton?” Madi said. “Not that family from Coruscant?”

“The very same, actually,” Thomas said. James could feel the forced grin in his voice. “Well--disowned at this point, so not technically, but they did give me my name and raise me, so...” 

He would have kept talking had James not reached out to grab his hand--on instinct and without tugging to hide it in their shadows. It didn’t take long for the glint of understanding to pass over them. New Providence Island’s cache of myths held James up like a torch, the Zabrak captain who ascended to unprecedented heights in the Imperial Navy by hiding his horns under a wig and foregoing the traditional facial tattoos--the famously shamed noble entwining their fingers together filled in the blanks of that myth better than any of the drunken speculation at the cantina ever could. 

Max’s brow had softened, but not enough that it settled into trust. “Welcome, Thomas, to--”

“Whatever this is,” Silver motioned in that grand half-serious manner that so efficiently dug under James’ skin.

“Yes, whatever this is,” Madi said, standing to join their circle. To anyone that didn’t know her, she would have sounded cheerful, but the tone rang acidic in James’ ear for reasons he couldn’t immediately deduce. “And we can’t afford to waste time, now can we?” 

Her last remark was pointed, a decidedly sour glance to Silver tossed on top before she and Max detailed the final obstacles to leaving Dantooine behind. 

For one, the backup hyperdrive on the blast boat was busted; the primary was operational enough to make the short jumps between here and Lah’mu but too finicky for whatever else they would be forced to attempt in the coming days, and no one wanted to find themselves with two dead hyperdrives four hundred lightyears from the nearest system. 

For two, Silver’s contact was an asshole.

“Hey--”

“Madi’s words, not mine,” Max said. 

He was demanding five hundred credits for the intel on Jack and Anne’s last known location, and they only had two hundred between them after accounting for the hyperdrive part. “We couldn’t talk him down,” Madi said. “There isn’t any chance you brought that kind of cash with you?”

James shook his head. He and Thomas maybe had about fifty credits between them--Lah’mu didn’t have much by way of an economy, so there was never reason to keep credits around. 

Max sighed. “Time for Plan B, then.”

She and Madi latched themselves onto either side of Thomas, insisting that their trip to the ship parts yard could double as a vetting process--“It’s not that we don’t trust  _ your _ judgment,” Max told James in a stage whisper. “We just want to be sure. It’s been a long war. You understand, of course.” 

It wasn’t a question.

That left him and Silver to extract the intel from this mysterious contact, which didn’t seem to be a task Silver was too intent on starting right away once they were alone. 

“I need a Black Nebula to help me think,” Silver said, nodding to the bar. “Messa--”

“I know,” the Togrutan said, mixing the drink. “And for you, sir?”

James waved the offer away. 

The Black Nebula was less black than caf-colored, swirling with the alcohol unevenly to give it what James assumed was its distinctive shimmer. Silver’s first sip downed it to about the halfway mark.

“You didn’t seem this stressed when you picked us up,” James said as lightly as he could.

“That was before I knew I’d have to deal with this contact again.” The next sip didn’t drain as much, but it wasn’t insignificant. “You ever dealt with former Clone Troopers?”

“Can’t say I have.”

Silver nodded, almost to himself. “They’re an ornery lot, at this point. I’d say count yourself lucky, but given where we’re going…” 

In retrospect, James was surprised to find that the  _ Purrgil _ had never had a clone in its crew. Nearly every variety of nonhuman was represented, from Wookiees to Ithorians to Toydarians, and the humans crawled up from any corner of the galaxy imaginable. Dufresne had done the books on Nal Hutta. Billy Bones was born on Corulag and reemerged on Kessel. And never once had a single preternaturally aged clone wandered up to their quartermaster inquiring about open positions. Perhaps they’d been forced to learn as quickly as they aged, hearing enough unlucky fates of pirates at whatever spaceports they’d melted into. 

“Let me do the talking,” Silver said, as if James would consider anything else. “Orbak is… let’s just say I know how to deal with him.”

The last of his Black Nebula vanished up the straw he’d ignored until then, and he led the way back to the main thoroughfare. The vendors were fewer and further between as they ventured away from the heart of Garang, but the noise never settled to a level that would have suited ears accustomed to Lah’mu, even in the lower-income residential sections where land and airspeeders could barely fit in the streets. 

“How’d you meet this Orbak character?” James asked once it became apparent no one had followed them into the neighborhood. 

Silver shrugged. “How do you meet anybody? Chance...the Force…” He threw a smirk over his shoulder like he was daring James to say something.

It wasn’t guesswork. He  _ knew _ he was daring him. 

The knowing didn’t help. “The Force is a load of nonsense, Mister Silver--”

“It’s Mister Silver, now?”

“I was trying to make a point--”

“Perhaps you should listen to the stories of the war you didn’t fight, then,” Silver said, turning to walk backwards just to shove that awful smirk of his in James’ face. “If the Force didn’t exist, how did Luke Skywalker bring down Darth Vader? How did the Death Star plans make it into the hands of the Alliance intact? There’s a lot of chance to answer for.”

James rolled his eyes. This was already a tired discussion he was forced to retread with Thomas; hashing it out with Silver with all these supposed new arguments in his camp would only be a monumental headache. (And he could already hear Silver’s voice overlapping with Thomas’--“One might say the Force brought together you and I.”)

He wasn’t ready for that. Not yet, or perhaps ever. 

“Whatever happened to that life you were going to build with Madi?” James said--and out of nowhere, half surprising himself. 

Hearing himself say it drilled a deep pit in his stomach, and it drilled deeper watching Silver’s step hesitate, if only for a moment. 

“Oh, you know,” he said, a sad smile gracing his face as he turned back to face front. “The galaxy isn’t exactly a romantic.”

So there were limits to what credit was due to the Force in his eyes, thank the stars. But if the greater cosmic hand of the universe hadn’t spun them away from each other, another hand surely had, and James was more certain than not it was the one currently pointing at the shabby sign over the doorway on the corner. 

“He fixes busted weapons,” Silver said. “Heard someone once pulled a blaster saying he’d ripped them off, and before his finger made it to the trigger, Orbak had snatched it from his hand, disassembled it completely, and flung one of the spare screws into the man’s eye.”

Without taking his eyes off the storefront, James sensed Silver glancing at him for a reaction he wouldn’t give. 

“And we’re not talking Rodian-sized eyes either. He was a Chadra-Fan. Little,  _ little _ eyes. Aim’s good for a man his biological age.” 

“Did you have a plan, or did you miss regaling me with this sort of thing too much to think of one?"

“Trust me,” Silver said, a hand falling on his shoulder. His fingers twitched with an aborted squeeze, that second-thought vibrating all the way to feet as they stuttered against the sidewalk. 

_ Trust me _ . Right. What was one more pint of trust when he already cashed in on gallons of it getting him on that junk heap he called a ship. And the reserves ran deep. 

Silver’s grip didn’t stray from his shoulder until they were both sitting across from Orbak inside the shop, at which point it fell to the back of the chair. He offered Orbak a wide target and, from the glower settling into his forehead, more than enough motivation to take advantage. Foolish, and James had a hard time settling on whether this was a calculated choice given the man in front of them or if this was another in a long line to come of new revelations about a man he once tried to know as well as himself. 

“I hear there’s been a bit of a disagreement,” Silver said.

“I don’t want that Max and Madi coming into this establishment again after the stunt they pulled,” Orbak huffed, sending the lengthy white hair of his mustache jumping up as if to underline the point. “You insult me by asking a price so low and you further insult me  _ again _ sending those newfangled Republic types when all those nose in the stars rebels-turned-respectable haven’t even  _ said _ the word ‘clone.’”

James was suddenly very aware of the holdout blaster tucked into his boot and the collapsable vibrosword pressed against the small of his back. This was the kind of energy that used to drip from Vane before the shootout burst into the open, and James wanted to keep both of his eyes.

Any second now Silver could remind Orbak the New Republic had moved on without them. Any second. The grin he’d plastered on his face when they stepped inside sit held the same angle, so maybe their resources had been stretched to their limits. Maybe Silver’s head for quick talking had finally spun out.

“So,” James said, leaning forward. “None of us are big fans of the New Republic right now--”

“Max and Madi--”

“None of us  _ here _ ,” he said. “The people we’re looking for--the New Republic is sparing them about as much attention as they are you and the rest of your brothers. As you can imagine, with us having fallen out of their good graces, we don’t have a lot of spare credits around. I mean… you should see our ship.” 

Orbak leaned forward to match James’ pose, squinting to study his face and folding old war scars into his wrinkles. “You… I don’t know you,” he said finally. “I know what this moof milker did to descend back into the underworld, but you…” He tapped a finger against the table with a clink--the entire hand was an old Clone-War era prosthetic. “Something’s off about you.” 

With how many times he’d heard that over the course of his life, James thought that the nervous clench it prompted in his stomach would have at last left him be. Instinctively his hand almost flew to his head to check that a horn had not broken through his wig even though the wind from the open window blew over his skull; he could see the tattoos lining his jaw in the mirror on the back wall, the incongruent angle on the left side of his chin where Rackham had suddenly sneezed mid-line. 

If there was something Orbak was going to find loathsome in him, it would have been nice to anticipate it. Or so he told himself. 

“I’m as good as a deserter to them,” he said, leaning back into his chair. “That’s all you need to know.”

“You got a name?”

Silver’s hand on the back of his chair pressed up against his shoulder blade--the whole palm, then all that weight just on the first two fingers like he was trying to tell him something. 

“James.”

“James  _ what? _ ” 

What he’d taken away from Silver’s bit of explanation was twofold: dealing with Orbak required speed and anything but a blaster, and the clone had barely slammed his metal hand on the table before James had the vibrosword pulled from the back of his trousers, fully extended and an inch from Orbak’s neck. 

“I said--that’s all you need to know.” 

“You’re not getting your kriffing information then, I don’t care  _ what _ you pay me--”

Silver’s grimace was audible. “I don’t know if you’re quite in the position to make those sorts of claims.” 

Ten minutes later they were walking out the door with a datapad in hand and no fewer credits to their names. 

James waited for Silver to say something. Anything. And he waited for himself to put together the words he wanted out there, but he couldn’t put a finger on what general direction he even needed those words to come from. The marketplace drowned out any hope of hearing each other anyway--the relic vendor had grown bolder and a Duros had dropped a full crate of jogan fruit in the main intersection, rinds and seed-laden flesh sliding precariously underfoot. A copper protocol droid hobbled into Silver, and he helped secure his balanced before guiding James down a different alley. 

This alley wasn’t anywhere near as narrow but the light still hadn’t figured out how to reach past the dingy third-floor windows overhead. And it was quiet again--enough to worry about untying the gnarled mess collecting at the base of his throat. 

“Was concerned for a bit that you’d need a refresher course,” Silver said, and part of James’ knot pulled loose. But only part. “Honestly, I’m a little sad you don’t. I wanted to be the one giving  _ you  _ lessons for a change.”

James snorted.

“Please. You missed the bulk of the war. It’s not such a stretch.”

Up ahead, soft pink neon leaked from the cracks in the wooden doorway of a hidden tapcafe, a reliable spot, according to Silver, to lay low waiting for the rest of the crew to notify they were ready to meet back at the ship. The other place was fine, apparently, but Max didn’t like the feel of the Rodian napping at the back. 

“And I think she and that bartender Messa have a history,” he added.

Some things didn’t change. But some things did--James glanced over at Silver in the dim light of the alley, and at that angle, with his head turned just so, his hair looked far more gray than brown. As if twice as much time had passed in the rest of the galaxy in his time away. 

James tried not to think about it--and the mystery signal against his back, and the horrible truths of a planet turned to rubble, and all the hours spent apart from those from which he’d hardly known personal space. He tried not to think about it at all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's hard to write when you're unpacking after a move but that's done now thankfully. anyway,

James wanted to swap stories; or rather, he wanted to listen to Silver tell them.

The HoloNet, now that they were back in range, could give the dryer details--the players and planets, strategic maneuvers and delicate politics of it all--but he wanted to hear the drama of it. Being back on Dantooine, the familiar low skyline of trees and plains breaking open at the very edge of city limits, it prodded something back to life in James. It let him hold a vibrosword to someone’s neck.

He could get Silver going if he offered a tale in his own decade-long chasm, but the only one of note was a rumor already years-old by the time the crotchety Abednedo at Lah’mu’s attempt at a spaceport relayed it to him and Thomas one rainy afternoon. It was coming down in solid waves, crashing against the vertical face of the cliff ahead of them, and the Abednedo had room under the tarp.

“One of those Imperial Lambda cruisers broke into atmo, see,” he said. “Headed straight for that terribly-kept farm with the nosy little girl--you go ask the Prolli family about them, they were neighbors--and those Imps snatched them right up! Death Troopers and all! And don’t look at me like that, it’s all true or else my name isn’t Nozlee Tilbrook!”

It’s not that he doubted Tilbrook. But why would Silver care about some nobody farmers?

More history was slipping through his fingers. Already he couldn’t extract the truth of Silver’s childhood, and waiting for the rest of their group at that tapcafe, he tried to nudge him into giving up something.

So did he formally join up with the Alliance? (Yes, in fact.) Did he ever meet or work with any of the big names, the kind of names that already cast a shadow before James left? (Some.) Like who? (Ahsoka Tano, once, after she passed the Fulcrum title on.) What was the Fulcrum? (Are you sure you don’t want even a bantha blaster?)

 _Anything_.

And once Silver’s comlink buzzed in his belt, he didn’t have the chance to pry. The other three were already at the hangar, and Silver was the only one who could unlock the on-ramp.

“Just hurry up, will you?” Madi huffed over speaker. “Someone’s going to notice if we spend too much time loitering by this hunk of garbage.”

The shortcut they took through the network of alleyways was as silent as it could be--the chatter from open windows above and the main thoroughfares on the other sides of buildings offered a cushion for James’ discomfort, something for him to rest that taciturn mouth of Silver’s on before it broke in his hands.

It wasn’t going to _break_ , no, that was absurd--but the instinct was still there, gnawing.

Silver stopped them before they crossed back into the open. A landspeeder zoomed by just in front of where they were about to step, a couple Aleena skittering after it with parcels tumbling away from the hold of their arms; they passed, and still Silver held his arm across James’ chest.

“I don’t see any more of your little friends,” he said.

Silver glanced at him, staring, the blank expression slowly pulling itself into a warm grin. “You and Thomas look so happy,” he said quietly.

All James could manage was to nod, to try to match that warmth even as something else under his skin tugged at him wordlessly. But before he could make sense of it, Silver hurried them on. The hangar was on the other side of the square, and taking any longer would only cause them trouble.

*

The _Concordia_ , as Silver had decided to name the blast boat, let itself drift in orbit above Dantooine among the rest of the satellites and other ships coming in and out of the planet. Hiding among the crowds getting through customs was a better bet than anything on-world, and--as Max had said so many times over the years--it was more difficult to barge into a sensitive meeting when it was surrounded by the vacuum of space.

“The hyperdrive should be good to go,” Madi said, throwing a greasy towel over her shoulder and sidling into the galley booth on the other side of Thomas from James. “So you want to tell us where we’re going?”

Silver waved his hand in front of his face in a mock bow and pressed a button on Orbak’s datapad at the center of the table. A holo projected above it, the blue flickering image a familiar sight: a surly Nautolan with a hat covering half her face close beside a Mirialan with a mullet, the traditional diamond tattoos cutting a sharp line under his cheekbones. On the other side of the Nautolan was a short man looking over his shoulder, face obscured.

“That’s one point in Orbak’s favor,” Max said. “At least it’s actually them.”

Holos could rarely give detailed pictures of one’s surroundings yet what they saw before them had James wondering if perhaps Orbak was right to ask the price he did. The image was faint, but surrounding their heads like a halo was the void of a deep enormous crater.

“Says here his people last spotted them on Jedha,” Silver said.

“Explains the crater,” Max said.

“Does it?” Madi circled a finger around the edge of the crater in the image. “Sure, the Death Star didn’t hit it at full capacity, but there’s no way it’s inhabitable. That kind of blast should’ve knocked it out of orbit, at least.”

Jedha--James could have sworn he’d heard the name before, but all this talk of its involvement with one of those Death Stars was new. So much passed Lah’mu by, and he couldn’t take the time to interrupt the briefing to make them explain all this painful history to him and Thomas. What happened on Jedha? The only answer that mattered at the moment was _nothing good_.

“When is this holo dated?” Max said.

“Hm...what, two weeks after Anne sent you that last message?”

Max didn’t give him any notice that she’d heard him; her eyes focused on the large black eyes under the shade of Anne’s hat, the way her fingers casually coiled around one of the headtails resting on her shoulder.

“That was eight months ago,” she finally said.

Madi sighed. “It’s better than nothing. And ‘nothing’ isn’t useful in a galaxy this size.”

Descending into grumbling past each other, Max and Madi each fiddled with the datapad, trying to see if they could slice out any other information Orbak had forgotten to scrub, and Silver climbed over the table to get to the cockpit. He was deep in his own grumbling, just to himself, something about hyperspace routes through the Unknown Regions and a potential fuel run on Glee Anselm before jumping off into the great void.

“Heard Billy kriffin’ Bones was still convinced Jedha was a mining accident--”

“Still not done licking stormtrooper boots, is he--”

Some wounds never got the chance to scab over, it seemed. And he almost made a move to ask about it, where Billy had ended up after rubbing shoulders with Woodes Rogers on the bridge of the star destroyer _Maritima_ , but Thomas cut across him first.

“Mister Silver, if you’re thinking of stopping on Glee Anselm, we might be able to…” He trailed off under the others’ stares, reaching for James’ knee under the table.

“Again with this ‘Mister Silver’ bit,” Silver muttered, finally settling into the captain’s chair.

“Anne Bonny… she’s just--a Nautolan, so her homeworld assumably… surely someone there could have heard from her--”

“Like who? Her family?” Max turned back to the datapad, fiddling with a knob that easily came off in her hands and then the casing just underneath it.

The thread of thought frayed apart with a snap; or, more accurately, Max sliced through it with a freshly sharpened knife. And Thomas took it as his cue to leave, giving one last squeeze at James’ knee before sliding himself back to the ship’s cramped excuses for bunks.

“How much longer ‘til we’re out of here?” Madi called up to the front.

“Well,” Silver sighed. “If I could do the calculations in _peace_ , then I’d say soon.”

No, Thomas had the right idea. James followed after him, the continued sniping only growing sharper with his back turned--just like the days on the _Purrgil_ , only more cramped and more layers of personal debris to trip them up when they weren’t paying attention or simply didn’t know where to look.

In their bunk, Thomas was trying to put some of his things away; half the meager number of drawers couldn’t close, and he kept knocking his head against the hooks in the ceiling that seemed to have once held the worn hammock piled in the corner.

“Careful.”

Thomas sighed, his eyes watching James shoulder the door closed and fall on the edge of the bed. “You’re one to talk.”

“As are you--apparently,” James added when Thomas raised an eyebrow.

“Why ‘apparently’?”

“You seemed surprised at my accusation.”

“Well…” Thomas sat beside him and stretched out so that the tips of his fingers grazed against the pillows. “I did just jump aboard a ship with a bunch of pirates flying off to who knows where.” The blast boat shuddered around them as they made the jump. “See? Who knows where we’re going?”

“Silver, hopefully.”

Sitting back up, Thomas met his eye with a grin that coiled warmly around James’ chest. “You know what I mean.” He glanced around the room at the odd scratches and dings in the walls, the discoloration on the floor where something had been spilled and ignored for too long. “I can’t say I’m happy to hear about what’s happened to your old friends, but…”

When he looked at James like this, cupping his face in his hands and tracing the lines of the tattoos with his thumb, it was like they were standing in that desolate quarry on Wobani again. Prisoner transports rattling over the frigid wind fell into a black hole as the galaxy split itself open to correct its records of the lost. It was suffocating then and it was suffocating the moment after that, and after that, and on and on until it ran up hard against a blast boat rocketing through hyperspace.

Thomas kissed him, soft and overwhelming. “I also can’t say I’m not curious to see what your life was like in those years,” he said. “I feel like there’s so much you haven’t told me.”

When he put it that way, James saw before him that split in the galaxy collapsing in on itself--maybe the records weren’t corrected at all, maybe this between them now was what needed to be rolled back to the proper order, maybe this was responsible for how impossible it was to breathe so close to him. What kind of Force worth acknowledging would toy with them that way?

“Well…” James said. “You’re going to have to get better with a blaster.”

“I’m perfectly fine with a blaster!”

“It took you four tries to hit that bantha running straight toward you.”

Thomas help up his hands in defeat.

When they’d have time for a bit of target practice was a mystery, but it was a hold on the situation regardless, tenuous as it was.

*

“That Glee Anselm talk wasn’t just talk, huh?”

“I wish I could say otherwise, but…” Silver leaned back in the captain’s chair and motioned to the fuel gauge, which sat dangerously close to empty as they idled waiting for a dock at the spaceport.

“And you didn’t say anything?”

Madi was the only one of them who had ventured into the cockpit in the downtime; James and Thomas hovered in the door while Max had opted out as soon as the interrogation began. A smart move, James admitted to himself. This must have become commonplace since he left.

“I knew we had the stores to get us here, and you all were worried enough as it was--”

“You don’t have to make decisions like this with a crew of five--”

A pair of eyes pressed into James’ back, and he turned to find Max pulling on a pair of fingerless gloves. “Are they done yet?”

“Um…” Thomas grimaced. “Should they be?”

“Any minute now.”

Almost on cue, Silver pushed past them, his prosthetic leg clanging along the floor and then up the ladder to the gunnery bay where he’d set up his own bunk without a word. Max only rolled her eyes.

“Are you having an out-of-body experience or something with Long John Flint over there?” she said, and only then did James realize she and Thomas had moved to join Madi in the cockpit. “Come on. We can get out of this.”

Their scheme was presented so casually that James doubted it hadn’t been pulled off at least ten times before across various systems; _oh, of course,_ they said by the set of their shoulders, _the fuel gambit, everyone knows how this goes by now._ But they humored them, laid out every detail, starting with the two hundred credits--“Two hundred and _fifty_ ,” Thomas said, tossing in their rusted chits--that could buy enough fuel to get to Jedha and maybe one more jump after if they found a trail to follow. Getting back would be an entirely different rancor to wrangle.

“On Jedha, at least, the way they were blown to pieces,” Madi said, “prices are going to be tripled. Who knows past that. We have to get a full tank here.”

“Ideally,” Max added.

The approach was two-pronged: a chunk of the pool went with one of the crew, usually Max, to negotiate a fair deal on legitimate terms while a team of three found another mark and robbed the nerfherder blind.

“Either way, we’ll be able to get to Jedha,” Max said. “I’m the contingency.”

“Was there no contingency at one point?” James asked.

“What do you think?” Madi said, fighting a laugh. “Ask John about Corellia that time after the Battle of Hoth. He tells it better.”

Thankfully Max had been to this part of Glee Anselm before, one of the ports far from either capital, and already staked out a place for them to hit while she carried out her own end of the mission. “I have a datapad full of the galaxy’s most gullible men, and two of them are within walking distance,” she said as the ship clanked into its dock. “This one”--she pointed to a square on the holoprojected map--“has been swindled by every Twi’lek-run sabacc hall in the Outer Rim for the same reason most human men are. And this one…where to even kriffing begin…”

Most of the fuel for the spaceports serving the Nautolan’s terrestrial counterparts, the Anselmi, came in through this location and was stored at the warehouse under Max’s finger in the map before distribution. There were never massive quantities kept there at any one point--not enough to warrant more than one person on guard duty.

“Brog Maal built his home _in_ the warehouse, which he owns,” Max said. “So it’s only ever him.”

“Brog Maal… I’ve heard that name before,” said Thomas. “Was he--”

“The Besalisk senatorial aide who nearly burned down an entire wing of Palpatine’s personal residence? The very same.” Madi couldn’t hide her grin this time. “No clue how he ended up here after that fiasco, but thank the stars he did. There is absolutely nothing going on up top.”

“Good new for you lot, then.” Thomas leaned back against the doorframe, nearing on cheerful at the prospects.

James felt Madi’s grimace before he saw it.

“Oh no,” she said. “You’re coming with us.”

“You said you needed a team of three aside from Max.”

“Right. You, James, and me.”

“What about--”

“His leg’s troubling him,” she said curtly. She let the comment rest at their feet for a beat before standing and heading to the stash of supplies by her bunk. “Get your blaster, Hamilton. It’s time to go.”


	4. Chapter 4

Brog Maal’s warehouse was on the far side of the spaceport from where they’d docked the _Concordia_ , and James had expected the trek over to have the sort of serious concentration associated with a stealth operation, but it was as if Madi had absorbed all of the chattiness James remembered of Silver and was intent on indulging it as long as possible.

At first, he couldn’t be sure she was talking to him the way she quietly carried on about the politics of managing the processing encampment of Imperial deserters, with Chancellor Mothma saying this and Ackbar saying that and an untold number of migraines fogging up everything in between--until they found themselves waiting at an intersection for the light to change and he was met with a frown.

“What?”

“You _were_ listening, weren’t you?” she said. “I asked you a question.”

“I was… I was!” he insisted when she raised her eyebrows. “What--”

“Nevermind.” The landspeeders hummed to a stop at their crosswalk and she forged ahead at a good clip. “It’s not like it’s my problem anymore, anyway.”

By the time they caught up to her, they’d ducked into the alleys and the topic had shifted to someplace just shy of Silver. She never said his name, never once referred to him, but with every segue she herded him to the center focus of that crease sharpening on her forehead.

(The _Concordia_ ’s hyperdrives were constantly failing and the gunnery bay was never meant to house a bunk. The last thing the Onderon Marooned needed while the New Republic Senate got on its feet was some connection to the galactic underworld. Some stubborn veterans of the war had started thinking the use of a bacta tank was a sign of weakness. There might have been some way to save Alderaan--and Jedha and Scarif before it--and all the worlds laid to waste by the remaining loyal Imperials had Dantooine gone differently.

Silver’s fingerprints were all over them.)

All the while, Thomas fiddled with the blaster Max had dug out of her personal stores, a far sleeker model than the one whose edges had tarnished and rusted in the Lah’mu humidity. It had half a dozen settings for stun alone.

“Why can’t these things just be point-and-shoot?” he muttered. “Who has time to adjust these knobs in the middle of a firefight?”

“You’re not wrong,” James said.

“Maybe I’m better suited to something else--”

“We can figure that out after we get out of this system,” Madi said, gesturing for them to fall back against the wall. “It’s around the corner.”

So it was: the warehouse was just like every other James had encountered this far from the Core aside from the small outcropping off the far-right side, which he assumed was Maal’s home. Madi pointed at the opposite end of the building where the main door would be, the only obstacle barring their entrance a lock she didn’t appear too worried about slicing. That never had been a matter of concern before, anyway.

“So...what,” Thomas whispered. “We go in, stuff as many fuel packs as we can into our jackets, and book it out? Seems alarmingly simple.”

“It’s not _quite_ that simple. He’s got some MSE droids that help manage inventory, and they can be skittish. They're loud when spooked,” she said. “Should be the only risk once I slice the lock correctly.”

“Not ‘if,’” Thomas noted to himself, and after a tense couple seconds under her pointed stare he offered a sheepish apologetic grin.

The commotion at the city center had picked up, so no one paid any mind to their three figures slinking around the corner and across the exposed plain, a soft muddy expanse where short sprouts of coastal reeds desperately tried to live long enough to flower. Chunks of worn duracrete rose between the dying plants, dotted remains of some road that met an end so unceremonious that they hadn’t bothered to finish the cleanup.

The root cause was a mystery until he nearly tripped over a rusted battle droid foot circled by a particularly tenacious crop of reeds. Clone Wars. He should have suspected.

“ _James_.”

Madi and Thomas were already at the entrance, and here he was still out in the open, staring at his feet for all they knew. She hissed at him again, waving him over with the hand not currently occupied with slicing the lock.

“What the kriff were you doing?”

“Scrubbing off the last of my rusty patches, apparently.” He nodded to the door. “How long is this going to take?”

“Longer if you keep talking to me.”

He glanced over to Thomas, who’d pressed himself as flat as possible against the wall, blaster held toward the sky against his cheek. Stars, neither of them had anticipated this anxiety--Thomas because he’d stored up all that confidence from before their discovery and then after with the pared-down tales James allowed to slip free. He could see Thomas’ truth of it now, could say he’d predicted it all along if asked. What he didn’t want to admit was his assumption that everyone could fall into this state as he had. As Dufresne had, gnawing open that Imperial’s neck like a starving wampa. As Anne had, and for seemingly large stretches of her life.

“We’re in. Come on.”

Madi jumped to her feet as the door slid silently open; it was the only piece of high-tech infrastructure Maal had sprung for. The sheets of durasteel comprising the walls might as well have not existed with what little soundproofing they supplied, and all of the fuel packs were stored on ceiling-high metal shelving blocks that split the length of the warehouse into three aisles. At the end of the center aisle laid the door to Maal’s quarters.

Aside from the MSE droids’ distant chirping and a faint metallic tapping, it was completely silent.

Or: as silent as it could be, given the landspeeder a few blocks over that just laid on its horn.

Madi motioned for each of them to take an aisle, and they got to work.

The lighting was too dim to quite make out the labels--not only the odd shorthand on the shelves, but on the fuel packs themselves. This wasn’t a standard way to store fuel in the galaxy anyway, at least closer to the Core, and even if James dared to fish out the glow rod on his belt, he didn’t think he’d find anything in Basic, much less using the Aurebesh.

_Enough pondering_ , he thought, shoving packs at chest-level into his jacket. There’d be enough time to figure out the exact quantity they’d nicked when they were back on the _Concordia_.

His left side at capacity, he wandered up to the next block of shelving and stopped to see how Madi and Thomas were doing. Madi, as he’d expected, was perfectly fine. She’d climbed up to the second tier of that shelf block to avoid the buzzing MSE droids at her feet, deftly tucking pack after pack into custom-made loops on her belt. Thomas, too, looked as if he was handling himself just fine; his movements in the other far aisle betrayed none of his earlier anxiety.

Just as he was about to turn back to his own shelves, he glanced back Thomas’ way. The metallic tapping under the MSE droids had kept up the entire time and seemed to be getting louder--and converging on Thomas’ location. Squinting, he looked through a gap of fuel packs in one of the blocks on that aisle and saw a distinct pair glowing orbs waddling in his direction.

“Good afternoon sir!” All blasted protocol droids sounded the same, didn’t they? “Welcome to Maal’s Fuel Barn, how--”

Two shots of a blaster followed, then a dull duracrete-muted crunch. James ran over and found the silver-toned droid flat on their back, eyes dead to the world, with a sparking blaster hole at the center of the forehead.

Thomas was still pointing the blaster at them like they might get back up.

“Nice shot,” James said, clapping him on the back. Only then did Thomas lower the weapon. (And he couldn’t be sure in the low light, but he swore there was a tinge of a blush too.)

He heard Madi before she materialized on his other side “Why the _kriff_ did you do that?”

“You said there’d only be MSE droids! I panicked!”

“Oh, like all of your intelligence has been a hundred percent accurate,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Now Maal is obviously going to know we’re here--”

“He would’ve known as soon as this thing opened their mouth!”

“Still,” James said. “It’s a very clean shot.”

“Not the point.” Madi said. “We need to get out of here. _Now_.” She glared at James as if she’d known he was about to ask if they had enough fuel, and it was as good as an answer: whatever they’d gotten would have to do.

“C’mon.” He nudged Thomas to follow her up the center aisle toward the door, glancing over his shoulder. Maal’s door was still closed. “Go.”

When he turned back, he spotted Madi slip out and around the corner, and Thomas wasn’t close behind--he was a fast runner with long legs that could outpace anyone from James himself to the obstinate flock of chickens they’d had for a while on Lah’mu. He rounded the corner after Madi and James’ heart rate eased.

“You kriffing thief destroyed V-3!”

And James had been counting on those door hinges being whinier.

Brog Maal was barrelling toward him by the time he swiveled around--even for a Besalisk, he was a hulking tower of a man, at least seven and a half feet tall, all four arms stretching the seams of his shirt sleeves. There wasn’t any sign of a weapon anywhere on his belt or hidden up a pants leg, not that he ought to have needed one against the average Zabrak.

_But._

Maal howled in surprise when James whipped his vibrosword from behind his back, swinging it down toward his broad chest as it buzzed to its full extension. Pieces of cloth flew into the air as it shredded the forearm of his upper left sleeve; underneath, protecting the arm itself, was a dull metal plate sparking under the whirring blade of the sword.

James pushed in harder, more sparks jumping in the space between them, but he couldn’t make a dent.

“Treated myself to some beskar armor,” Maal laughed. He swiped at James with his lower right hand and missed, quickly following up with the lower left, upper right, arm after arm--James dodged where he could, blocked where he couldn’t, ripping apart more of Maal’s shirt until it was essentially sleeveless.

_Where did some backwater blackmarket dealer get the credits for beskar?_ James couldn’t allow himself even an ounce of distraction, but the question kept sliding into the back of his head. What Mandalorian was traveling out this far from home--

Of course it was the extra question that did it--Maal swung a fist into James’ stomach, winding him as he sailed back into the floor. The horn furthest back on his head scraped against the duracrete with an awful noise, filing down the side close enough to the quick to make James’ teeth ache.

“You think you’re almost some kind of Jedi waving that thing around, don’t you?” Maal stalked toward him and cracked all of his sets of knuckles at once. “You think you can come in here and kick a hole in my operation, eh?”

While he still struggled to pull enough air back into his lungs, his legs were as good as jelly. Thankfully Maal hadn’t knocked the vibrosword from his hand, but there wasn’t any guarantee that any part of Maal he could hit from his position wouldn’t also be reinforced with beskar.

And still he trudged closer. The building seemed to shake with every plodding, heavy step. Underneath it all, though, James noted a metallic creak coming from the shelving block to his left--just because Maal had invested in beskar for himself didn’t mean that he hadn’t been cheap elsewhere.

The lowest level of shelf wasn’t flush with the ground; the rods at each corner should have ended in some kind of stabilizing base, but these were starting to curl on themselves under the weight against the duracrete. And he could reach one with the vibrosword.

“I’m never going to be the laughing stock of Coruscant again--what--”

James sliced through the support rod like it was nothing and willed his leg muscles take as much of the wind back in his sails to get him out of the way--he scrambled a few feet, jumping up as the structure groaned its final collapse, pelting Maal in stray fuel packs and debris until the heavier boxes and full weight of all that metal obscured his body with a sickening crunch.

The only part of him still visible was a forearm still plated with beskar.

Madi and Thomas were going to be worried. And he didn’t want to keep them in that state for too long.

But there was more space in his jacket for fuel packs, especially since he’d dropped some in the fight, and he couldn’t bear to just leave armor like that behind. Sure, none of them could use it as Maal had, but he had a hunch--a vague unspoken hunch, one that joined Madi’s remarks earlier in the day orbiting around one John Silver.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the patience on this update. lots of weird brain struggles and the like. and then i got a dog. and that was a whole adjustment. helps with the brain struggles though.

“Was Max’s intel really so bad that you ran into a bunch of Mandos down there?” 

“And come away this unscathed, the way we were armed?”

James frowned at Silver as he pulled up a stool in front of a large worn chair that had molded itself long ago to Silver’s shape. He was half-slouched, head propped in his hand, prosthetic leg tossed aside like junkyard scrap near the hammock in the corner, and meeting that frown with a deep glower that would have rivaled anything he’d shoved at the Imperials in their heyday. 

Silver wasn’t happy that he had broached the entrance to the gunnery bay, but he’d simply have to get over it.

The beskar sat in James’ lap, and when Silver tired of staring at him, he took to eyeing it instead. “So… what? That Besalisk had this?”

“He did.”

“And you stole it along with all the fuel? Seems like a risk.”

“Less so when you’re looting a body.”

It was barely perceptible, but the corner of Silver’s mouth ticked up from under his fingers. “You can take the captain out of Na’ssau…” He leaned forward and James mirrored him, resting his elbows on the beskar and leaving only a short space between them.

This path they walked in moments like this remained even after all the years apart if they could remember how to follow it, if they didn’t allow themselves the distraction of everything else that had sprung up in the meantime. James could see Silver struggling with it, wondering why he couldn’t pin down the reason James was sitting here, in his private space, with a piece of armor they should’ve hawked off for the credits. 

James could pin down this much about him, at least.

“Here.” He didn’t so much as grin as he stopped scowling, handing Silver the beskar. 

“What would I do with--”

“Your leg,” he said, and he leaned on his words to bare the sharpness in them like they were back on the bridge of the  _ Purrgil.  _ “I know it’s never been comfortable and if you don’t want to take anything for your trouble, that’s your business. But I’ve seen how you’ve been walking since you picked me up. I know what bad blaster and electrostaff scars look like. So wear it.”

Silver made no move to see how it would fit around his thigh. The plate rested in his hands as his brow furrowed deeper, any sign of his glower melted so completely that James forgot he could even hold his face in such a position. 

“Please,” James said, softer. 

“You promise it won’t slow me down?”

“Impossible,” he snorted, paying close attention to the toe of his boot instead of anywhere else. 

The air was growing too thick for his tastes, and he sensed he’d intruded enough, so James rose, shifting around Silver to reach the ladder to the rest of the ship. He clapped a hand to Silver’s shoulder as he passed him, though, and before his fingers could slip away, a hand met his there, squeezing. James waited to take that last step, waited until that grip eased up to let himself back down into the galley. 

*

Jedha was a moon of mythical reverence to rebels who had paid their dues, and James felt himself wishing there was a way to work toward their mission without his boots having to touch the soil. Beside him, Thomas also shifted uncomfortably; he’d known Orson Krennic personally before the war had metastasized to its final form, and as the crater that was once the Holy City grew closer, the color drained from his face. They’d renounced the Empire, sure, but they had still been a part of it, part of the galactic cancer that left holes where planets and moons and history should have been. 

James hadn’t known much about Jedha aside from its name before Silver retrieved them. But Thomas had. And as they approached the crater that had once been the Holy City, the sanctuary of the Guardians of the Whills and the Kyber Temple and the footfalls of hundreds of Jedi in millennia past, something in Thomas shuddered toward collapse, and it was all James could do to hold his hand through it.

The people remained resilient. Small vessels led a hum of traffic in and out of the pit, while shops and residential complexes sprung up around the edge. Jedha City once sat on a mesa, and it would rise again against the negative space of its former ruin. 

“Don’t leave your coats,” Max said as the blast boat came in for a landing. “It was always cold here, but the Death Star blast only made it worse.” She swapped out her normal ear wrap for something fur-lined, a thicker set of goggles gracing her forehead. 

The wind cut through James’ outer layer within a couple seconds of disembarking at the bustling spaceport, coating them in dust wherever it found enough moisture to secure itself. Around them, beings of every species and possible occupation bent against the onslaught with as little exposed skin as possible. Under all the layers, human smugglers were indistinguishable beside traditional red-cloaked pilgrims still paying their dues; the dust filtered everything through a muted brown.

Thomas glanced at Max’s goggles, now down over her eyes, with a small ping of jealousy. “So where are we going?” 

“I know a guy,” Silver said, shouldering his way to the front.

“Here?” Madi raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, in fact. Well…” he sighed. “The guy I know is  _ technically _ the guy who knows the guy here--”

James coughed, which was enough to get Silver to throw up his hands and start on the road properly--or what passed as one. It was little better than a path, indistinguishable from the ground around it aside from the fact that foot traffic had worn it down, sloping to a center an inch or two lower.

After navigating through a couple throngs of merchants and smugglers coming the opposite direction, James could get a better look at the crater. Shuttles and other work ships scuttling along the bottom were half the size of an average comlink held in his palm, the rumble of their engines silent from this far away over the rubble and dots of laboring droids. Half of the rocks gleamed black in the afternoon light, the result of what could only be extreme, sustained heat. 

Such as a laser blast from a moon-sized superweapon.

Thomas kept his gaze fixed on the back of Silver’s head, mouth tight and the grip on James’ hand even tighter. 

“Hey--”

“James… not now,” he said under his breath. They fought through another few concentrated pockets of people before he spoke again. “I considered Orson--almost a friend, you know.” 

They’d stopped a few yards back from an intersection with another foot-worn path, one that led to a collection of stooped adobe buildings that must have been a residential district. The traffic in the center was close to a standstill, shouting complaints covering up anything softer than blasterfire. 

“When I was short research personnel leading up to that diplomatic summit on Umbara, he lent me his personal assistant--”

“I remember him,” James said. “Something Ronan. Absolutely insufferable. You hated him--”

“It was the  _ gesture _ . And then…” His face screwed up into a knot like he’d walked out to their crops to find them rotten from the local blight, only worse. “I never knew what he was working on, you know. Not until we were already--you know. He came to me seeking advice, and I gave it. We were sipping Alderaanian wine and discussing  _ project management _ and  _ Tarkin management _ , and--James,  _ Alderaanian _ wine.”

There wasn’t anything James could say to that. They’d been down this road before-- _ you didn’t know _ is nothing palliative. It only leaves the scar an angrier red. 

Eventually Silver led them to a cantina perched on an outcropping that punched deep into the otherwise circular shape of the crater. At this hour, only the corner tables had any patrons, and they were far more concerned with the eddies in their drinks that whoever walked in the front door. 

“I’m looking for someone named Sedh.” 

Slowly, from below the bar, rose a being half-replaced by cybernetics, one hand gripping a graying towel and the other knuckling a shot glass. James could only identify this person as a Gank--both arms were old models of what was considered high-end cybernetics twenty years ago, and the top half of the skull was replaced by a sleek but scratched-up helmet with a glowing red line where the eyes would have been. Below that sat an unmodified Gank snout, canine in shape and structure, short dark fur patchy over a yellowed-tan skin. 

“I am Sedh,” said the Gank, an echo of a growl in the words as a sharp tooth was revealed in a grin. “And who are you?”

“Friend of Every.”

“I know a few by the name of Every. Most of them are karking Imperial scum.”

“Henry Every. Runs with Karrde.”

“I know him.” A beat--“Don’t know you… or any of your friends.”

“Every always said, ‘Sedh will consider anyone hir friend for the right price.” Silver held up a datastick. 

“What the kriff is that?” Madi hissed, but Silver kept on.

“And friends pass on information, right?” Silver grinned, but it wasn’t one that James recognized. It was lopsided, less sincere than he was used to. Borderline conniving, even--Silver didn’t have the long, sharp teeth that Sedh did, but in that moment, it hardly mattered. 

Ze set down the shot glass, hir tongue running along one of the sharper teeth in thought. “I suppose so. As long as you’re not asking about Brendol Hux, I can definitely see about helping you.”

“Hux?” Thomas muttered. “That nerfherder--”

“Said what I said.” Ze extended the metal claws on hir cybernetic hands, the tips digging into the soft wood. 

Max stepped forward and pushed the datapad forward with the holophoto of Jack, Anne, and the mystery man. “We know they were here. We need to know where they went.”

Sedh squinted at the holo--or so James assumed from the way the red glow around hir helmet narrowed. “That short one’s Mark Read. He took all my regulars to the cleaners at sabacc almost a year back.”

That was one unknown filled in. None of them had been able to identify the third person in the holo. “What else?” Madi pressed.

“That Mirialan was more than any of us wanted to deal with,” Sedh grumbled. “Kept asking my other bartenders about hyperspace routes to some other backwater hunk of rock out this way. Played a part in the war, he said. Didn’t know why nobody knew about it, he said, as if anyone on Jedha cared about the war after it showed up at our doorstep.”

Ze glanced out the window over Silver’s shoulder where most of the view was obscured by one of the shuttles rising slowly out of the crater with freight hanging underneath from a thick cable. 

“New Republic hasn’t been out this way, then?” James asked. He kept his eyes on Sedh’s helmet, the way hir tongue poked at the tip of hir sharpest tooth--and ignoring how Silver and the rest of them silently pleaded with him to keep his mouth shut. “I know that kind of bitterness.”

“Who’s this?” Sedh muttered, only half at Silver.

“Don’t worry about him,” Silver said, approaching the bar. “He’s been out of--”

It happened so quickly that James almost missed it in the time it took him to blink: Sedh’s clawed hand hooking into the collar of Silver’s shirt from across the bar, the front edge of hir helmet pressing against his nose, the deep growl rumbling under hir ribs that shook the datastick from Silver’s grip. A glass tipped over with a clink, its glittery black-brown dregs crawling into the wood grain. 

“I’ll worry about what I deem necessary,” Sedh said. “Especially coming from Every’s…  _ pet _ .”

“I didn’t say anything about that.”

“You’re not denying it.” 

“Word from Phindar says you sold him out.” The light around Sedh’s helmet narrowed.

“If that’s the only word about me from Phindar, then I think I’m in pretty good shape.” Silver let his grin flop into something more open, something James recognized not from any specific instance but from all the moments they’d spent together overlaid, day after day. 

It was the kind of moment that twisted up his stomach, even with a stray finger hooked around Thomas’ belt loop for reassurance. 

Behind them, Max sighed. “We just want to know where they were going. Whatever this is…” She waved her hand dismissively at their display. “You can cut it out.”

The act collapsed quickly under her watchful gaze--even more quickly once Madi backed her up. Jedha’s economy was based in kyber mining like it was before the Death Star blew the holy city to pieces, but digging amid the rubble was far more costly than hiking into the mines or forcing oneself into the hidden caches of the Temple of the Whills. And that only meant that the markup could be that much higher. 

“Of course,” Max muttered to herself. “I bet this was Jack’s idea.”

“Look,” Sedh sighed. “The New Republic doesn’t really have any use for kyber with the Jedi only being one guy. Out in Wild Space… that’s where the customer base is. Huge market out in the Rakata system. Heard there were people making it big in the Redoubt. It’s the only reason anyone more Core-side than this even comes out here anymore.” 

Silver kept working hir--a few more well-placed smirks and what James thought was a wink under a stray curl that had fallen in his face was enough to get Sedh to relent. 

“Gannaria,” ze said finally, releasing Silver from hir grip. “Its main thing is spice production, but there’s a civilian population. That Mark Read character got a lead from one of the Blutopian union bosses around here. But that was ages ago.”

“Were they hauling kyber?” Max asked.

“They were hauling something,” Sedh shrugged. “The day before they left, I’d never seen anyone act as cagey and skittish as that kriffing Mirialan.”

Max caught James’ eye, and if he had any less self-control, the look she gave him would have sent him into a laughing fit. 

“One last thing.” Before Silver had a chance to back away from the bar, Sedh grabbed the lapel of his shirt again and pulled him close into a slow, open-mouthed kiss. Silver almost seemed to lean into it, a hand coming up to press a couple fingers into hir helmet before letting them fall away. “Tell Every,” ze said, “that I haven’t forgotten.”

“I’ll pass it along,” Silver said. He was the first one back out the door of the cantina, Madi and Max following close behind. 

A tug on James’ hand indicated that Thomas had started after them, but something in James’ gut rooted him to the spot. Sedh sat behind hir spot at the bar, wiping down the counter and a stray glass with spots ze may have missed, but the glow of hir helmeted gaze sank on him like the press of a planet’s stronger gravity. 

It wasn’t mistrust--but something close to it.

“Come on, James,” Thomas murmured. “We don’t want to lose the others in a place like this.”


End file.
